Gear shaper

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A gear shaper is a machine tool for cutting the teeth of internal or external gears. The name shaper relates to the fact that the cutter engages the part on the forward stroke and pulls away from the part on the return stroke, just like the clapper box on a planer shaper. To cut external teeth, a different machine called a hobbing machine can be used.

The cutting tool is also gear shaped having the same pitch as the gear to be cut. However number of cutting teeth must be less than that of the gear to be cut for internal gears. For external gears the number of teeth on the cutter is limited only by the size of the shaping machine